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Over half of the world’s internet traffic isn’t coming from humans

February 16, 2017

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A new report shows that more than half of Internet traffic comes from bots — software applications that perform automated tasks for almost anything you can think of on the internet.

The report presented by Imperva Incapsula goes to show that, for several years, bots have taken over the Internet and are more in number than humans to browse sites and collect information. This assertion results from the evaluation of more than 16.7 billion visits to 100,000 sites of the Incapsula network, randomly selected.

Bots are so prevalent in the digital media ecosystem that even the most sophisticated publishers can’t avoid them. The good news is that the increase in bot traffic last year was mostly due to the addition of good bots in the ecosystem, while bad bot traffic remained nearly the same, reported Axios.

Good bots are those designed to monitor or enhance our web browsing experience.

Bad bots, on the other hand, are those used to steal content, overwhelm web servers, or steal analytic information from insecure partners. They also cost businesses an estimated $7 billion in revenue annually due to ad fraud.